Start today’s study by reading Exodus 20. Ask God to reveal Himself to you in a fresh way today.

Background

In Exodus, chapter 20, we see the first appearance of the 10 Commandments in the Bible. God’s free but wandering people have come to Mt. Sinai, God has promised to set them apart if they obey, and the people have agreed to do all that He says. They have prepared themselves for his promised arrival, and God has indeed arrived. Read again in Exodus 19:16-19 of the first appearance of God on the mountain:

On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled. Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the LORD descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, the whole mountain trembled violently, and the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder. Then Moses spoke and the voice of God answered him.

After God arrived, his first instructions to the people were what we called the Ten Commandments. In summary:

1. I am God; do not put any other gods in front of me.
2. Do not make an idol of anything, do not worship it.
3. Do not misuse my Name.
4. Remember the Sabbath. Set aside a day of rest where you remember me.
5. Honor your parents.
6. Do not murder.
7. Do not commit adultery.
8. Do not steal.
9. Do not say things about people that aren’t true.
10. Do not desire what your neighbor has, not his wife, house, servants, livestock or anything else.

Hearing from God

Today’s focal passage is Exodus 20:18-19.

When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”

I have to say, these two verses landed on me like a ton of bricks. Do you see what the people are doing? God came to them and wanted to reveal himself to them in a totally new way. He wanted to settle on the mountain and speak to them directly. He wanted to tell them the best way to live, to reveal his charge to all human beings. He has set them apart for a special purpose and the moment has arrived.

The people’s response to God through Moses was, “Tell Moses what you want us to know. We don’t really want to hear from you directly, we want you to just talk to Moses and have him tell us what you think. Moses is a man like us. We would rather hear it from him.” It is almost as if they have smacked God in the face.

At first, I questioned my response to this verse. Surely that’s not what happened; they didn’t teach me this in Sunday School; why would they reject God that way? I had always thought that God was the one who only wanted to talk to Moses. But read Moses summary of these events in Deuteronomy 5:5:

At that time, I stood between the LORD and you to declare to you the word of the LORD, because you were afraid of the fire and did not go up the mountain.

Moses spells out clearly in Deuteronomy why he received the commandments from God instead of God revealing them to the entire nation. The people were just too scared.

What does this mean for us?

Deepening our relationship with God can also be scary for us too. He doesn’t show up in a mountain in a cloud of smoke, fire, and lightning. But he does ask us to change. He does tell us that an encounter with him will not leave us the same.

Has there even been a time in your life where your fear of God has kept you from approaching Him? What was is the source of that fear? Was it a fear of change? Was it a fear of rejection? Was it shame for who you have been and what you have done? God again and again reveals to us throughout His word that he wants a relationship with us (see the God’s Desire section from last week’s study). This theme continues throughout the entire Old Testament and into the New. Ultimately, God sent his son Jesus to the earth to reveal Himself to us.

The beautiful thing that we see in Exodus, is that God wanted to reveal himself. However, the people could not approach him that way. Later in history, He sent them prophets; he sent them great leaders; he also allowed them to have no-so-great leaders. He was faithful to them and blessed them when they listened. When they went astray, he allowed them to suffer the consequences of their actions to teach them and bring them back to Him. Finally, God wrapped himself up in the skin of a man, and came to live with mankind so that we could approach him and not be afraid of His incredible glory. He ate, and walked, and taught, and died at our hands.

In 2 Corinthians 5:21, Paul is talking about Jesus when he says:

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

The Message paraphrase says it this way:

How? you ask. In Christ. God put the wrong on him who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God.

When Paul speaks of us becoming the righteousness of God here, he does not mean that we become perfect. He means that we become right with God. Being right with God is all about the relationship.

The amazing thing about God is His consistency. His ultimate purpose in relating with the Israelites was to reveal himself to them and to build a relationship with the people. His ultimate purpose in sending Jesus to this earth was to approach us so that we can be rightly related to Him. Since the first tick of the clock, God’s whole purpose has been to reveal himself to us so that we can have a relationship with Him. If we make our faith about anything else, then we have missed the entire purpose for our existence.

So today, how do we tell God that we understand that he wants to know us, and we would like to know him back? How do we start that relationship? We simply talk to Him. Tell Him you want to start a relationship with Him. Below are the steps that He gives us in the Bible, to start that relationship with him.

1. Admit that you have not always lived in the way that He would have you to live. You have sinned against God. (Romans 3:23)
2. You believe that God has revealed himself to the world (including you) through Jesus. He came, lived, died, and rose again to bridge the gap of our sin and fear so that we can know God. (Romans 10:9-11)
3. Tell God that you want to live in a way that honors your relationship with him and that He is now the first priority in your life. (2 Corinthians 5:15)

If you have talked with God and started a relationship with Him, it’s important to find people who share your commitment. You can contact me or talk to someone you know who has a relationship with Jesus. Find a group of believers in a local church who can be a support to you as you journey together.

Thought Questions

1. How does the consistency of God throughout time affect your faith in him?
2. What can you do to be more willing to listen to God as He approaches you?
3. Has there been a time in your life when deepening your relationship with God was frightening? How did you respond?

Today we’re continuing in Exodus 19. We’re going to focus on the attitudes and responses of the Israelites through this chapter. We’ll look back a little bit and see which attitudes are consistent with how they’ve responded in the past and look to what choices they will make in the future. We will also discuss how this applies to us.

Background

We left off last week with God’s promise to the Israelites in 19:4-6. We talked about God’s requirement that the people listen to His guidance above anything else and we also briefly discussed the people’s response to God in 19:8 where they gave their answer to God:

The people all responded together, “We will do everything the Lord has said.” So Moses brought their answer back to the LORD.

When you read the people’s response to God, do you believe them? It sounds genuine. The people said they were willing to do everything God said. But, if we look back just a few weeks, we also see the following coming from the very same people in 16:3:

“If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”

Here’s the background. The people had been traveling for several weeks since leaving Egypt. They had come to the desert and were concerned about what they would eat and drink. In Exodus 16:2 it says that the “whole community” was upset. They complained to Moses and Aaron that they would’ve been better off to die in Egypt! Very melodramatic!

But before we give the Israelites too hard of a time, let’s remember that their need was real. They were in the desert. There were millions of them. They didn’t know exactly where they were going and there was nothing to eat or drink. It’s important that we understand that their need was very real. Imagine being in the middle of the desert with small children, with livestock, and with everyone that you know. There was literally NO food anywhere. Surely this wasn’t where there great and powerful God wanted them to be. They had trusted God, and Moses, as he caused amazing things to happen in Egypt so that they would be set free. But now, amazing has stopped and they are hungry!

In the few weeks since they left Egypt, the thrill of the excitement had worn off. The trade that they made for their freedom also meant that they would require a new reliance on God to care for them. But, instead of taking their requests to God, and calling on His name, they grumbled to the nearest target, Moses. On top of that, they didn’t go to Moses and just say, “We’re hungry. We’re in the desert and there is no food.” They blamed him for all that was happening to them.

A Personal Story

In our lives too, we have choices to make when things don’t work out as we think they should. When hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, and the terrible images of destruction and despair began to show up on our televisions across the country, I wept for the suffering that I saw. Typically, tears don’t flow easily with me but the level of destruction and heartbreak was overwhelming. I remember praying to God and pleading, “There is so much suffering down there, but we are so far away. There are huge organizations involved that do great work but God please, in some small way, give us the ability to make a difference.”

In the next few months we became associated with a local congregation right on the coast in Gulfport, Mississippi. They were one of the few church buildings in that area that hadn’t been destroyed and they became a launch point for a great deal of the relief work that happened in that area. To date, we’ve made several trips there to provide support, and also to enjoy time together with the friends we have made. There is one particular story of God’s working through our relationship with this sister church that was evidence to us that He always knows what he is doing, even when we don’t.

Early on in the recovery stages, people were still struggling for basic necessities. Clothes, furniture, diapers, and other staples were all difficult to come by. As we shared the needs with other churches in our local area, we met with some very generous offers. One individual had access to a warehouse and had donated clothes and furniture. We were very excited when he told us about these items, but didn’t know how we were going to get all of the goods from our home town to Gulfport, 700 miles away. We had a small trailer and had decided to take only what we could transport ourselves. A short time later, a tractor trailer and driver were donated to provide transportation for all of the goods we could find. God was providing in a wonderful way, and we were so excited!

We jumped into action and started organizing people to sort, fold, and pack. We mobilized people and shared with them the need and encouraged them that the hours of folding and sorting in the cold warehouse were worth their efforts, as it would be providing to our newly made friends in Mississippi. God had provided all of these things and we only needed to get them packed up and on their way.

The day the truck was to leave, we got a phone call from the pastor in Mississippi. He explained that people had stopped showing up for clothes and that the mini-store (where all items were free) hadn’t been getting many visitors. He didn’t feel right taking all of these things when they didn’t need them. As he and my husband were on the phone, my initial reaction was anger! Here are some of the thoughts that ran through my head:

• “How could they turn down our generosity!”
• “The people here have worked so hard for nothing! How can we tell them that their efforts weren’t needed!”
• “How are we going to look when the people find out they’ve done this hard work for nothing!”

These complaints sound a lot like Israel, “We would have been better off to die in Egypt!”

You see, my initial reactions were all about me. I have worked so hard; I deserved to feel good for doing all this hard work; I am afraid of losing credibility. All of those reactions reek of self-centeredness. You can see a direct parallel between my reaction and the reaction of the Israelites. Their emotions and concerns are really no different that our emotions and concerns today; only the circumstances are different.

Fortunately, my husband was the one on the phone. His outward reaction was calm and respectful, even though we were upset and disappointed. As he hung up the phone and we began to discuss, we started to see a bigger picture. We realized that God provided the clothes; He provided the tractor trailer; and He provided the workers to prepare them. This work had been His all along. We decided that we were going to ask Him to show us what He had in mind.

We started making phone calls. We called a relief coordinator in Mississippi and explained the situation, “We have a truckload of clothes and furniture packed up and ready to head south. Do you know anyone who needs them?” The answer was no, followed by, “You might want to try my counterpart in Louisiana.” We called the coordinator in Louisiana and gave him the same explanation. Imagine our excitement when we heard the news! Their office had just gotten a call from a pastor in Southern Louisiana in desperate need of clothing and furniture, exactly what we had packed up and ready to go! He put us in contact and within two hours the truck was diverted to its new destination, just another hour’s drive west. God knew that ultimately the people in Louisiana needed those items. And by His design, he allowed us to be part of what he was doing and taught us a lesson about his provision in the meantime. It was a powerful reminder to us that only God ultimately knows the outcome of the plans he has for us.

God’s Desire

If you read the rest of Exodus 16, you will see that God provided quail and then manna for the people to eat as they traveled to their promised destination. And His reasoning here is no different than the reason He acts in our lives today. In Exodus 16:12 the LORD says:

I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them, ‘At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God.‘” (Underline is mine)

If you don’t gather anything else from today’s study, get this. God was providing for the people so that they would know that He was their God. Again, the entire purpose of his provision was for his people to know Him. All that He does, and all of His work in our world is so that we may know Him. He ultimately desires a relationship with us.

Ask Yourself

I want to encourage you as you read the rest of our study to try and relate the emotions, experiences, and consequences experienced by the Israelite people with your own life. Ask yourself these questions:

1. How do you react when you find yourself in a difficult situation?
2. Do you cry out to God and ask him to intervene on your behalf or do you look for the nearest target to blame?
3. Do you doubt that God would intervene on your behalf? If so why or why not?
4. When you find yourself in times of difficultly what can you do to ward off discouragement and a negative attitude?